Middle class are to blame, says IDS

Iain Duncan Smith today blamed the riots on a "distorted morality" across society and also middle-class neglect of inner-city residents as he called for wholesale changes to prevent further disorder.

The Work and Pensions Secretary said the middle classes had ignored the plight of people living on run-down council estates and paid the price when the inner city "came to call" in last month's clashes.

He also suggested that a "failure of responsibility" among prominent figures in society - such as bankers, MPs and journalists - had contributed and that a better example needed to be set in future.

"For years now, too many people have remained unaware of the true nature of life on some of our estates," Mr Duncan Smith wrote in an article for The Times.

"This was because we had ghettoised many of these problems, keeping them out of sight of the middle-class majority.

"But last month the inner city finally came to call, and the country was shocked by what it saw." He added that there was no excuse for rioting but suggested that there was a link between the disturbances and a wider collapse in social responsibility.

A culture of "do what I say rather than do what I do is unsustainable," he warned. "The distorted morality has permeated our whole society, right to the very top," he said.

"Whether in the banking crisis, phone hacking or the MPs' expenses scandal, we have seen a failure of responsibility from the leaders of our society."